The GiveWell Blog

Matrix reloaded

We’re still right in the thick of things in Cause 1: we’ve received applications from about half our finalists and are still waiting on the other half. Two of those we received are causing me the most difficulty: Population Services International and UNICEF. PSI didn’t fill out our matrix, but it sent us their version….

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Great people

I’ve been thinking a lot today about the idea of “investing in people.” We are pretty obsessed with finding charities that have good results, but many people (including our applicants, and including some of the friends I’m making overseas ), are urging me to put more focus on finding great people, and trusting them. Here’s…

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Not everyone under-evaluates …

Fundraisers seem to do a phenomenal job. Somehow, you don’t see fundraisers making a lot of arguments that “Money spent on evaluation means less letters mailed out” or “Evaluation is difficult and you can never really isolate causality perfectly.” Instead, you see them testing. And testing. And testing. And learning things that are far from…

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Literature reviews

All I was trying to say in the last post could be summed up like this: This is an awesome literature review about early child care programs. It describes how the author found all the papers she discusses … it is totally straightforward about what the methodological strengths and weaknesses of each paper are ……

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